Students from Binghamton University’s New York Public Interest Research Group traveled to Albany last week to lobby against Gov. David Paterson’s proposed cuts to the SUNY budget.

In his budget proposal released in mid-January, Paterson proposed to cut allocations to SUNY by $95 million and to cut CUNY funding by $47.7 million over last year. Awards from the state’s Tuition Assistance Program could be cut by $75 per student as well. If approved, Paterson’s proposal could also allow SUNY and CUNY schools to individually regulate tuition.

“I feel that budget cuts are never a good thing for the SUNY system,” said junior Lauren Giles, the hunger and homelessness project leader for BU’s NYPIRG. “I don’t think tuitions should vary; it’s not fair at all to the students.”

But SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher understood the cuts and supported charging varying tuition rates, among other proposals.

“Given the backdrop of the state’s fiscal crisis, this legislation provides a way to protect the SUNY campus […] from the winds of economic change,” Zimpher said in her prepared remarks in a legislative hearing in late January.

She was referring to the governor’s Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act. The act would grant new freedoms to campuses, which would permit the use of assets to generate new sources of revenue, make it simpler to attain approval for construction projects and allow other moves that would shift power from SUNY central to individual campuses.

According to Jillian Burg, president of BU’s NYPIRG, BU’s sect of NYPIRG teamed up with three other groups — the United Student Senate, the Professional Staff Congress and United University Professions — to lobby at the State Legislative Office Building in Albany on March 9. The four groups, who met with legislators about the importance of investing in higher education, created a joint platform that rejects the proposals.

The members of NYPIRG dislike the fact that colleges and universities would be allowed to charge differential tuition rates that reflect varying costs across programs.

Giles said it would be more difficult for students that have “less of an income to take classes that are more expensive, especially for students looking to become doctors and engineers where the classes would cost more.”

Before the annual NYPIRG Lobby Day, BU’s organization held a two-day letter-writing drive. Students around campus were able to write letters to Sen. John Sampson of Brooklyn and State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver about Paterson’s proposals for budget cuts. NYPIRG members hand-delivered the letters to Sampson and Silver, who will be reviewing Paterson’s proposals.

NYPIRG is an advocacy group that helps direct student action on college campuses. They focus on issues including higher education, the environment, voter registration, consumer protection and hunger and homelessness.

BU’s chapter of NYPIRG lobbies annually in Albany. They most commonly defend higher education.